You're listening to the Back Home Network presented by Home
Field Apparel. Welcome back to Crimson Cast,
Galen Clavio joining you along with Scott Caulfield.
It is Saturday the the 25th of January.
It's hard to believe that we find ourselves almost at the end
of the month, but here we are and we are ready to talk some IU
football. We had Taylor Lehman on earlier
on this week to talk some of the XS and OS and we're going to
talk about some of the other questions that you folks brought
to us via Twitter or via the back home network discord.
Scott, before we get started, great to see you.
We've already had one costume change this morning as we showed
up wearing the same hoodie. So I'm I've I've reverted to my
let's shock the world fairly Dickinson T-shirt.
How are you doing today? I'm.
Good. It's a probably happens once or
twice a year. I mean, it's something something
we all deal with. It's something it's a home field
problem. Just, you know, show up with the
say the Spider Man memes. As as as many thousands of
different things are in the home field storefront online, you're
eventually like you'll have that moment where you wear the same
thing as somebody else. It's actually it's a big problem
here in town our our buddy IU artifacts who chimes in
occasionally on the show. We've got to have this thing
before we show up at a place to go watch IU to make sure we're
not both wearing like the never daunted hoodie.
It's it's an issue. It almost to the point I feel
like we need some kind of online check in system among friend
groups related specifically to home field apparel where someone
gets to reserve. You might have to do it like
weeks in advance. Like you know, the weekend of
February 8th, I'm going to be wearing the bison hoodie and
nobody else. Can and it all sounds great,
another social media platform until like 2 years from now,
people are ranting about politics on the home field check
in and then it should be shut down.
And it's like, I'm going to white sky to get, you know,
whatever, like blue sky to get my new, my new home field white
sky. Well, I, I was thinking like at
that point, blue Sky's done. So like you have a new color
like red sky or green sky. It's I'm going to the new app.
Like that's where you can go to just check in your home.
Field without any political discourse and then it just keeps
keeps propagating over and over again yeah it's the nature of of
human beings to make all of their discourse completely
intolerable after a certain period of time anyway Speaking
of home field they are presenting sponsor not just for
us but the entire back home network and.
We think you should go visit them, use the code home 23 and
get 15% off your first order and got the last like I I got
another. I don't need another hoodie like
I need a hole in, you know, like I need a hole in the head.
But the the College Football Playoff stuff is leaving their
site, I think Monday. And so I was like, I'm like, OK,
I'll look at it again. It's like, oh, that was, that
was fun. And like, I, I've always
believed like if your team wins a title or you get there, like
buy as much stuff as you can. And so I, I did and I bought two
more hoodies. There you go.
It's we talked about that on the last show.
Do that, folks, if you're an IU fan, or if you're an SMU fan, or
if you're a fan of any of the teams that made the.
College Football Playoff. Go get that stuff before it's
gone, because you'll want to have had it at some point, even
if the loss still stings. And of course, there's thousands
of other options on the Home Field Apparel website, so go
check them out again, Home Field apparel.com, your place to go
for the finest in college fashions.
Also, folks, just a reminder, Back Home Network's going to be
back home again in Indiana. I'm already here.
But the rest of the Back Home Networks coming back to Indiana,
or at least the vast majority of it on the 8th of February will
be at the upstairs pub starting at about noon.
IU plays Michigan that day. If you were at the event last
year, we had a lot of fun. We, Scott and I did a live show
at upstairs during that Penn State game that went great, let
me tell you. But we had a great time seeing
everybody. So hopefully you folks are going
to be back in town and we'll get to hang out with you at the
upstairs pub. We'll have more information
coming up here soon. Still a couple of weeks away,
but looking forward to it here on Crimson Cast and Assembly
Call and Doing the Work pod and and all the the rest of the
shows in the constellation of the back home network.
So absolutely looking forward to that coming up.
Also, there's one last reminder. We are on sub stack.
Be sure to check us out at crimsoncast.substack.com.
It's free and we will send you podcasts via e-mail.
It's, it's what all the cool kids are doing and you can join
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It's again, it's free. There is a paid option if you
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stable. We occasionally have some VIP
videos. We'll have 1 today as we talk a
little bit about IU men's basketball, big game and a
potentially interesting home environment coming up tomorrow
as they host the Maryland Terrapins.
So we'll check all that out coming up here in our VIP video.
That's a good reason to subscribe.
So anyway, Scott, we put out a call to the peoples and asked
them if they would send us questions about IU football
'cause we get so many people in our comments now, they're like,
I wish this was a football podcast again.
It's like we are planning on continuing to cover football.
I promise you folks, throughout the course of the spring as we
get updates, a little bit of a quiet period right now as the
season's over. Things have settled down quite a
bit in terms of transfer portal movement.
Still some stuff floating around there.
We've got, you know, there, there may be a lineman or two
that Indiana might be able to pull in.
I don't want to get ahead of myself, but that's where we're
at with everything. And we will be continuing to
talk about football. We've got questions that we
wanted to, to dive into and so we'll go ahead and get to that
right now, Scott, I, I guess maybe before we get started, as
we go in and talk about football and talk about some of the
changes, Let's start with the big one, which is the season
ticket alterations. We got emails that came out.
I've gotten a lot of messages about this Indiana instituting a
personal seat donation on top of the regular ticket cost.
This is something that a lot of folks, you know, have have
questioned and a lot of people, Hunter Schultz asked this
question, you know where your season tickets are located.
You'll be charged a mandatory donation of somewhere between
zero and $250 a ticket. The question that I've heard
from a lot of people, why not just include this in the season
ticket fee up front? So there's a couple of things I
think that are worth noting. First of all, we've been very
lucky to have not had personal seat donations as part of the IU
football ticketing experience. And it's largely been because of
the lack of market demand for IU football tickets or just kind of
the general lack of place within the IU sporting culture for
football. As we've talked about many times
on this show, this is the norm in most places.
I think this is, I think I use like the 14th school in the Big
10 to adopt this particular pricing model.
It's very similar to personal seat licenses as you see in the
pro game. And it's one of those things
where it looks like, wow, why am I being charged this extra
money? And a lot of people like, why
isn't it just wrapped up in the, in the ticket price?
A lot of that's accounting. A lot of that is, you know, when
it's a donation, even though it's not tax deductible, it does
count in a different way in terms of, of how you can apply
it. If you look at the fine print of
the personal seat donation, it's, it's the varsity club
payment that we're all very used to, which has been largely
voluntary. It's been largely point accrual
based. Are you going to a system that a
lot of basically all the schools that are taking football
seriously from a financial perspective we're using, it is a
bit jarring, but it's also, Scott, just kind of one of those
things that happens in the industry And there are
accounting reasons why they set it up this way.
And I'm not here to defend it per SE, but I will say that even
with the highest ticket price and the highest personal seat
donation price, I think the most expensive ticket in the house is
like $720, which is remarkably cheap compared to the total cost
you would be paying at most other schools that have good
football programs. Yeah.
I mean, you, you hit on a lot of those pieces that, you know,
it's, there's a reason why they didn't just increase ticket
prices. And also, I mean, that would be
jarring too. Like if your ticket price just
went, you know, from whatever it is, you just add $250 to your
ticket price. Like that's, that's very
jarring. That's a big move up.
But but it's, it's internal accountings and way the ways
they can use that money. And like having been a donor to
the Varsity club for years, I know that, you know, the Varsity
club always prefers money that's donated without attachments to
it. You can donate money and say, I
want this to go to baseball or I want this to go to student
athletes. You know, the minute you say I
want this money to do this, it hampers what the Varsity Club is
able to do with it. They want money that they can do
whatever they want with it and it just becomes money and that's
what they want. And that so that is, you know,
it's not ticket sales. This is just, you know, slush
fund money isn't the right way. But the other thing to look at
is you look at, you know, and I'm just doing some very basic
math here. Fun times.
You know, if you figure there's 30,000 seats in the stadium that
are going to get a personal seat donation and the average
donation's 150 bucks, just kind of round numbers, that's four
and a half million dollars. Like that's why you do this,
because it's real quick. Some people are going to be
annoyed. I I assume less than 1% of
people are like, well, that's too much after last season, I'm
not doing it. You know, if you figure there's,
you know, what is it like 4000 tickets in the $250 range,
that's $1,000,000. Like This is why you do that.
It's money that's thrown in there.
What what I thought was interesting is, as you say, in
the professional sports, a lot of times you get a person, a
personal seat license. And that that word is different
than a personal seat donation because a personal seat license
normally means that you're licensing that seat and that
becomes your seat. A personal seat donation is
something that means you're doing this every single year.
So this is going to happen every year.
And I think that's important because the thing that I've
been, they're also doing this year, which is different.
It's not wrapped up in this, but it kind of is, is they're
reseating the entire stadium for the first time in probably 5 or
6 years, which again, I'm for because for all the people who
are complaining about, well, I've had these seats for years.
This is where my family goes. It's like this is not the Indy
500. Like look at Assembly Hall.
They reseat that every single year because it's a, it's the
number one, you know, event ticket.
They're selling as it as a brand and they weren't able to do it
with football and now they are. So I think you're going to see
these two things happening every year.
You're not only going to reseat every year, but you're getting a
personal seat donation every year.
But they would have called like a five year license.
Then maybe they're not receding for five years.
But I mean, both of those things are not like awesome.
But it it, it is the the next step of an evolution of a
program that, you know, as you and I, you say like it's taking
football seriously. Yeah, and, and look, I get
people being like, why am I being asked to pay all this
extra money? And I guess the question is
like, where do you think the money comes from in college
athletics? And and you, who are you
competing with now? So let me use Tennessee as an
example. Tennessee actually had, I think
what most people would say was a relatively inexpensive season
ticket compared to some of their their competitors in the SEC.
If you look at their price breakdown, I think it was for
this past year. You know, if you take, if we
take away like the club seating, the the premium stuff, let's
let's just go to like a the Bleacher seats in the West
sideline of Neyland Stadium. The tickets are $450 apiece,
which I believe is more is less was more expensive than all but
one of the the categories in the IU one like the the most
expensive, the tier ones, which are basically 567 and eight or
25262728 basically the 50 yard line on either side.
Those are $476 per ticket. All the blue seats around and
above those, which are the next best seats in terms of sight
lines, are 441. So you've already dropped below
what Tennessee is charging you for season tickets with that to
get those tickets, those sideline Bleacher tickets, the
equivalent in Neeland Stadium, the contribution is $1050.
So the, and that's per ticket. So you're actually talking about
a $1500 ticket. So you're paying even for the
best seats in Memorial Stadium, less or just about half of what
you would be paying for the exact same seat there.
Now you've, you're talking about a, you know, Tennessee's had
sustained success. Indiana, this is their first
year where they've really been like this level of successful.
So I'm not that concerned about the, the, the increase there.
And, and as you can see, like you could talk about, well, why
don't we wrap this up in the ticket price.
You can see that the industry standard here is that we don't
do that. I know this sounds like I'm
like, like justifying it, but it's just like this is the
business reality to me. It's more of a surprise we
didn't have this system before. Well, and also like, think of
this kind of like you, how you pay real estate taxes in
Indiana, you pay in the arrears like this is you're kind of
paying for last year's performance.
Like, you know, they, they had a great year last year and now
it's like, all right, we can do this.
This is kind of like you're paying the 2024 tax, taxes in,
in April of 2025. You know, this is this is what
you're paying for that performance.
I mean, honestly, you know, I will say this point not getting
us off track, but like, if you're going to be more annoyed
at payments for production, you should be more annoyed at what
you're paying in varsity club donations and what you get
priority points wise for IU basketball over the last 20
years. Like that's, that's what's
always been more frustrating to me is like, you know, if IU
football goes out and does another 2 and 10 like they did
after the 20 in the 2021 season, then, yeah, like, I'm going to
be slightly annoyed the way this happened.
But again, I, I do look at this as as kind of, you know, in the
rears first thing, because IU was in a spot like, I'm sure
they wanted to do this for a couple of years.
They just needed a good season to do it.
They got it and now they're doing it.
I mean, it's not going to go away.
Now comes the, you know, performance has to kind of keep
up with this. But as you said, I'm on, I'm in
the same boat. I'm not here to defend it, but
it's like, you know, an extra 200 bucks.
You know, my, my seats are in, you know, Section 8.
We're in the blue section of the map, which I still think are
fantastic seats. Like even if I had the
opportunity to move, I'm not sure I would like, I kind of
like where I'm sitting and I'm not in the premium 250 ticket,
you know, so it's 200. We have 4 tickets.
That's the decision that I make to get 4 tickets.
It's 800 bucks. Like, all right, that's not
awesome. But I, I also donate to the
Varsity Club. So, you know, maybe I, I slick a
little bit off of that and move this up there.
It's like, it's not, it's not a ton for an entire season ticket,
you know? Yeah.
Well, an. Entire season ticket and you
know, I, I, Yeah. Anyway.
I'm I'm just thrilled my the place I like to get my tickets
is in the yellow. So I'm I'm in an even better
spot. We'll see how that actually
plays out when they do the seat reord.
And the thing that I would all, sorry, the other thing that I
would say is it would be frustrating if it didn't look
like Indiana was using this money to try and better the
program, But they are, I mean, I listened to your, your podcast
with Taylor Layman and was like blown away when you guys were
talking about the, I mean, I knew the salaries had gone up
with the salary of our defensive coordinator where it's like like
$2,000,000, like it'll be in the top, you know, 10 in the country
in a year or two. And it's like, oh, and like, you
know, you see what they're doing, they're trying, you know,
some, some premium seating on the ground level.
They're having better concessions.
You know, you keep hearing about how we're, you know, top ten in
the country and NIL like, and and they're you know, they're
they're paying Sidetti, they're getting good coaches like across
the board. We look at IU football.
There's no real area. You can say what it looks like.
They're just lining their pockets and not using this to
make the program better. Like they are using this money
very effectively to push this program forward.
So, as you said, like, yes, they get a lot of money from the big
10 network, but this also just needs to come from the donor
base. So I'm.
I'm OK doing it because I'm a fan, I'm part of the process,
and it does look like the people who are in charge of the money
are putting it to really good and effective use.
The other thing I'll say is that what's hovering over all of this
is this NIL settlement and the idea that you're going to have
to move that within the confines of the athletic department.
I mean, we don't know. There's legal challenges to it.
There's going to be some questions about how all this
plays out, but the reality is every athletic departments
having to prepare for a future where they're going to have to
pay for the NIL payments internally.
And there's only a certain number of levers you can pull,
like the money doesn't just materialize.
It's why you're starting to hear about sports getting sunset at
other schools. That will continue.
And unfortunately, until there's a sane group of rules that are
instituted in college football, which does not appear to be
coming anytime soon, you're going to continue to see these
kinds of things because it's unfortunately just kind of the
way the business has been allowed to conduct itself in
general. And IU is put into a position
that all the other schools are where you have to adapt to it.
There's not really much of A, there's not much else you can do
about it anyway. Let's let's move on to other
questions. So we had a bunch of questions
about the stadium. Ryan asks, what are your hopes
for the renovations to Memorial Stadium?
How much would you want the seating capacity to increase?
We've talked about this on the show before, but there, you
know, there's been a bunch of talk.
Alex asks what might, what might the East Stadium club look like?
He also asked about the season ticket donations.
I've, I've been saying this for a while and, you know, we get a
lot of questions about the, the nature of the stadium with it.
We, we've heard there's going to be renovations.
I think, you know, first and foremost the biggest things that
I would like to see and, and this actually answers Patrick's
question as well of what changes do you want to see to the game
day experience, get the lights and the sound up to standards.
You know, you look at a lot of these other stadiums, they've
got the cool light effects coming in.
They've got much better sound systems than what a Memorial
Stadium has been able to provide.
One of the things about this season that was an interesting
proof of concepts to me was getting a chance to hear what
Memorial Stadium sounded like with a full stadium of IU fans
at maximum volume. And what we discovered is that
Memorial Stadium is actually a pretty cool little stadium in
the big scheme of things. It, it gets loud, it's, it
contains sound. Well, I, I don't, I mean, what
really you think what they, they enclosed the stadium into a bowl
configuration in what, 2017 or thereabouts.
It was somewhere in that range. And then we really hadn't had an
extended period of time where we could see what that was like.
And it's, it's funny, the number of people like on the, on the
college football subreddit who would see the stadium on
television and they'd be like, that's a neat stadium.
That's actually kind of a cool little design that you've got
going there. You know it even in the, the
college football game, I see a lot of people in those forums
talking about like how Memorial Stadiums, one of their
underrated stadiums, never thought these things would be
talked about in relation to Memorial Stadium.
Never, not once. But the question about capacity,
you know, so the Mora Stadium if you round up seats about 53,000,
I don't know. I, I do not think you want to go
down the road of expanding it at this point.
I think what you need to do is establish and and solidify
demand in terms of regular seating.
I do think that what you need to do is add additional premium
seating and when you get past the lights and the sound and
that kind of like general atmosphere stuff, premium
seating is probably the easiest thing to add in terms of an
architectural thing. And I would love to see them
setting something up on the east side as as was mentioned up
above the seating section. It's a really good spot for like
kind of the beginnings of the second deck.
You build a string of luxury boxes up there.
You put yourself in a position now where you're able to
generate a bunch more revenue you.
You make the stadium look a little bit cooler, especially if
you do it right in terms of how you like the color that you set
those things at. And you know, if they're, if
it's some kind of a glass and limestone combo that fits in
with the motif of the rest of the stadium to me, like that
combined with a real hard look at that press box that looks
like something out of a model train kit at this point.
Like that's got to get fixed as far as I'm concerned.
Like that's got to look more modern and something that
celebrates what heritage Indiana does have.
You know, you look at some other stadiums and they've got
whatever bowl victories that they've had or whatever, like
playoff appearances they've had recognized in the stadium.
People should walk into Memorial Stadium and not just be excited
by the atmosphere in the crowd, but they should also be able to
get some kind of sense of the heritage of the football team.
What? And I know Indiana doesn't have
a lot, but there is some they've they've had draft picks, they've
had NFL players that have done well.
They have won some bowl games. They've been to some some big
bowl games. Like all of those things
combined. I think you're you're not going
to get all of that within this upcoming year.
But as we look at the next couple of years, that's what I
would like to see, not a stadium seating expansion.
I don't think they need that yet.
Yeah, you took a lot of the good stuff.
Sorry, I mean I'm going to have to re restate.
I can't come up with more because a lot of the things I
was writing down and thought about you you took.
But I agree with you. Like the thing with we talked
about it a lot this season. I agree.
Like an expansion would be fun and like going to 7080 thousand
would be cool. Hey, I'm not sure we can meet
that demand yet. But also, as we talked about,
you know, what makes the stadium cool and fun I think is that
it's a little bit smaller, it's a little bit more intimate.
But it, you know, we're never going to scare other teams in
the Big 10. Like Michigan's never going to
be intimidated by coming into Memorial Stadium, even if we
expand to 80,000, because it's like, OK, you're still not Penn
State. You're still, you're never going
to catch up to those guys. That's a fool's errand.
We we buoy our team up and we can do that with the size of our
stadium now. So I agree with you like not
expanding would be there. I I was thinking, you know, when
I saw this too, premium seating because I was lucky enough to to
be have a game, the Maryland game where I was down on, you
know, the South end zone on the field and they have like, you
know, I think 12 little field suites down there.
It's really cool, but it does very much feel like I used to
joke. You know, we we have access to
like a a room during the game as a varsity club member.
It's in the excellent center. Now before that it used to be in
like the bowels of Memorial Stadium and you would walk down
these stairs and there's like exposed wires and I was like,
this is where you're sending your premium donors is through
this like hall of death. It felt like like I'm in the
middle of a saw video. The, the premium seating down
there is nice, but you know, it's, it's, it's temporary, like
they, they are temporary stands, temporary tents.
They have little fridges and food and you can like you can
sneak in back into the stadium to get to an area where they're
serving drinks and food. But it all feels very, this is
not what it was meant to be built for.
So I agree with you. And I think those premium type
seats, you know, back to the money thing, they bring in
another money revenue, but those are ones that I don't think
would be hard to fill with some of the corporate sponsors in the
Bloomington in the area. You look at what they did at
Assembly Hall, that little area, you know, the, the premium CD
area they had is not huge. I've never seen that like not
full like even for games where it's there's not a lot of
people, a ton of people were there.
So I, I agree with you on that. I agree on the lights.
I think that would be cool. I had heard that when Indiana
last put in their LED lights, it was like an extra 50K to get the
ones that turn off and on and we didn't, we didn't do it.
It's like that was that was a mistake because it would be cool
to have that. I think having that kind of
light show would be cool. I love the idea of, we had
talked about it earlier in the season, the East side is where
you have expansion growth because I, I love the idea of
kind of covering up the top of, of, of Assembly Hall a little
bit on those shots when they go out and it just becomes the IU
football thing. But I also think, you know, I,
I, I do think, you know, if you build something more permanent
for premium seating at field level, I think that would be
cool. But I do think it needs to be
more permanent on the South side and same thing on the north
side. The north side has a ton of
extra room over there and you have like a little, a little
spot there with like the ROTC. That's nice.
That still feels, you know, you can I I think that that north
side end zone is a lot of room to to build something permanent.
And whether it's a tunnel that fans or, you know, students are
near when the team comes out or something like right now, it
kind of just becomes a catch all of like, well, that's where the
band's going to wait and we'll have a little ROTC, which I love
the ROTC, but we have them over there.
We have like couple cheerleaders like it's just kind of this this
mishmatch of like that's what we'll throw stuff.
We're not sure where it goes. It becomes like the junk drawer
of the of Memorial Stadium. So I think something on that
side there you could do a lot of very cool, you know, low level
premium seating, which is interesting like something you
don't see a lot of in college, you see a lot in NFL stadiums,
you don't see a lot in college football stadium.
So it could be a nice addition having, you know, some very
permanent high level, like premium suite level seating in a
college football arena. Scott's number one priority is
not sitting with the normal fans.
He he wants to be. He's kind of one game.
I got lucky, had a friend, My God, you were like you're
sitting on top of the Excellence Academy for an entire season.
The Scott Caulfield like a wine tasting suite is going to be a
tremendous feature of the 2030 Memorial Stadium that we're
going. To good for it.
My personal seat donation is huge.
But yeah, it's great. I'm I'm fascinated with the
bidding war that Oliver Winery and Butler Winery are going to
have over having you as their their primary.
It's going to be amazing. Really looking forward to it
anyway. No, I think all those are good
points. And look ultimately.
Personal Scott license like it's just geez.
Wow, I know I'm I'm actually sad that that idea has been put in
your head. Now I'm we're never going to
hear the end of it. No, but ultimately, and we had
another question or two about the game day atmosphere and what
we'd like to to see change. I got to be honest, I thought
the game day atmosphere this year was really good, you know,
and and the, the tailgate atmosphere is really fun.
And for, you know, as much as the tailgating scene has been
criticized as an obstacle to people coming in and watching
IU, as it turns out, the obstacle was bad football, not
the tailgate scene. People wanted to be in the
stadium. People stayed in the stadium
when the team was good. That's that's how the paradigm
works. And I think that you're going to
see more of that, you know, the in stadium stuff again, I think
some cooler presentational items would be good.
You know, I think the stuff they're doing with the field
Mike is good. I'd like to see the on field
promotions get better because it just feels and it's, it's a
problem with all on field promotions everywhere.
Like there's just only so many of them.
And after a while, once you've seen them, they get really dull,
you know, So I think doing some more things there to try to, to
fix it up, it would be a good idea.
But you know, the, the video board presentation, I think is,
is really nicely done. The, there was so much great
work done in terms of concession lines this last year.
There's so many better options in terms of food now than there
were before. I mean, so many strides were
made this year for those of you who get off the concession
stuff. But you know, I, I didn't
mention it because I agree with you.
It's gotten so much better. There's so many more options.
They've added a couple of the quick checkout stands, which are
fantastic. Just the grab and goes, which
really helps out and having been to a game at, you know, Notre
Dame Stadium, which was awesome. I've been, we said afterwards,
like there was just lines everywhere.
Like the line in the bathroom was 25 minutes.
The line to get food was like 30 minutes.
Everything was a line, at least in the upper level.
You know, I used to joke that was always a problem, like
Memorial Stadium couldn't handle a full capacity.
That wasn't the case last year. And I think we talked about it
multiple times that you'd walk around in a full game.
It's like this is actually running pretty smoothly.
And but yes, there's going to be some lines when it's a full
stadium, but it it really isn't that bad.
So I agree with that and on the on field promotion, I agree with
that. The thing that I like I talked
to Jeremy Gray about it earlier in the year.
My only big thing that like their game day experience is you
have a moment there between the 3rd and the fourth quarter now,
like do something like, let's come up with something cool.
Like at UCLA, they played California, they had a light
show that was cool. And you know, jump around in in
Wisconsin, like these things take time.
You know, they tried kind of the the under eight time out from
basketball to port that over. That didn't work, although I'm
still not sure why. Like they didn't give that
enough time in my mind. But like right now they're
playing like We Will Rock you. And it's like just I'm just like
that's also not like we just need something and and make it
stick. But I I would just say being at
the game for that, it's not like that's that's sticking you.
You have a moment there to do something cool.
I'm, I'm, I'm generally with you, but I think these things
will happen organically over time.
I don't, I don't think you try to pick something and stick with
it. I think you try a few different
things and see what ends up being fun.
I mean, the reason the William Tell Overture didn't work
between the third and fourth quarters is, is it's it doesn't
scale to a football environment. It just doesn't.
I mean, it's it's kind. And I look, I'm one of those
rare people who I'm like, I'm kind of done with the William
Tell Overture thing. It's fine.
But I've been watching it my whole life get.
To your vote, I'm bringing it to football then if you're out on
it. Well, I mean, I think I think my
vote matters. There's, there's surely other.
It's kind of like when we talk about the rotation of songs that
get played and it's like the the that should probably be
broadened, you know, because after a while you go to these
games over and over again. Some people love the same thing
over and over again. I admittedly am not one of those
people. I like some variety.
I like to spice it up a little bit, you know, And so that's
that's where I'm coming from with that it and it's maybe
that's a hot take. I don't know.
But I think for football, not only does the William Tell thing
not scale, but I also think that's a basketball thing.
That will always be a basketball thing.
There's other things that can be done with football.
Let's see what they can come up with.
But I would say let's use this year to to trial some stuff and
figure out like what's going to get the best reaction, What
feels the most organic to the the emerging burgeoning culture
of IU football internally? I'd rather it came out of.
That so we'll see what happened something this year, like you
have the talents like so I hope my my hope is, and I'm assuming
it's going to happen like you have towels at every game next
year. They're all different.
You know, you get a different towels like you collect the
series that that becomes, you know, maybe oh God, bad idea,
Scott, don't say it. Maybe the next year's a personal
towel license. So 10 bucks in your seat gets
no. But like to me, it's like you
that was what was cool as this year is like he's I really do
hope the towels continue because that was something it's like,
oh, this is a tradition. Like this is something that was
built. We were there for it and now you
just need to keep building those.
But yeah, I hope the towels come back for sure.
We had some other questions Hoosier Review asked what one
local Bloomington restaurant would you want added to
concessions options? So we got a bunch of them.
Finney Hospitality Group was in there with Social Cantina this
year. Ever Bowl's in the stadium.
Buffalo Louie's is in the stadium.
Upland Beer. Stadium now, right?
Yes, yes, that's right. So and I mean I live down here,
you don't. So, you know, I guess better.
For you question, Yeah, yeah. It's it's an interesting
question because I, I think the, a lot of the food I think that
would, I mean, I'll, I'll say, I'll say the following and then
I will give an exact, you know, reason why that doesn't make
sense. A lot of the food that should,
you know, that I would like to see in the stadium doesn't
really work in a stadium atmosphere.
But then like ever bowls in the stadium.
When I think stadium food, I don't think acai bowl and yet
it's really good and it's a it's a really nice healthy option in
the stadium. If you they're in assembly Hall
too, If you want to check them out, they're up on the the
second deck there, not the balcony, but the like right at
the corner on the West side on the I guess would be the
northwest side, you know, So if you think about the other
options around town, you know, the I I don't know that there's
a clear choice. It would be interesting to get.
I don't know. We, you know, we got, you've got
wings options, you've got pizza options, you've got some
healthier fare. I don't know that I've got one
where I would say we absolutely, positively need to get that in
the stadium. It would be nice to have like a,
a good burger option that isn't any of the current ones.
And I don't know who the best provider for that would be and
whether that would actually translate particularly well to a
stadium environment. Like things like wings and pizza
are kind of you're, you're pre making them, you're just getting
them them and getting them warmed up the cook to order
stuff. I'm not sure if that necessarily
works 'cause that just invites a lot of lines.
But ultimately what I like is the fact that there's so many
different options in there that work as far as just food that
you can take back to your seat and food that you can get lines.
So I don't even know if there's one right now.
Is there anything to stick out for you as something even in the
Indianapolis area, 'cause I'm certainly so locked into
Bloomington, it's hard for me to get a sense of what's going on
elsewhere. No, I mean, there's stuff I love
up here, but then it's just like me talking about my like, I love
Ale Emporium, but like they don't have a spot in
Bloomington, so it'd be crazy to have like Ale Emporium wings
down there. I mean, I was joking.
Like you should have a Chick-fil-A.
I'm like, oh, they do have Chick-fil-A there.
Like they do like that's always busy.
No, I, I, I like the, I think you're right with the burger
idea. And that's where I just, you
know, like, I don't think Hinkle's hamburgers are still
rocking in Bloomington. They're still rocking in
Bloomington. They, they are the last business
that's likely to go into Memorial Stadium in terms of
like their setup. I, I, I, that's, yeah.
But I, I was, I was thinking when we were in college, there
was the guy who sold hot dogs outside of Kilroy's when he
left, like 2:00 AM, like maybe you get a hot dog cart, like all
of that. But no, I, I, I think it's a
testament to how, how much they've grown the food fair at
Memorial Stadium and the different local options that,
you know, it's, it's tough for us to come up with an answer
because there's not one out there.
It's like, oh, this is a great, you know, great restaurant in,
in the area that, that should be in there.
And I mean, they have, they have all the liquor you want too.
So I mean that would it's there too.
Let's move on to some other questions.
We did a question from let me go actually head head to the
discord. So this has been this question
ties in a lot to a lot of the other questions that we've had
in the same area. So Jared asks, what is the new
bar for success with IU football, IE, what's the minimum
level of accomplishment for next season that won't leave the
majority of reasonable fans feeling disappointed?
And so we got a lot of responses, people throwing out
win totals. We had a lot of people asking
questions about like, how many, how many games do you think
Indiana's able to to win this upcoming year given the
schedule? There was a, you know, Brendan
Bolander asked what are fair realistic expectations for the
2025 season? You know, what's the floor and
the ceiling from a record perspective?
So I I'll, let me try to answer this.
Justin Bobbitt as well, like, you know, with the portal talent
I use brought in along with the returners, is it reasonable to
accept expect a nine and three or ten and two season in 2025?
So there's kind of two separate answers here.
What's the minimum reasonable expectation?
I'll remind everybody that this is a football program that just
does not have a lot of historical success.
If you, you know, go down the entire history of IU football, I
think they have 11 seasons where they've won seven or more games,
12 if you count 1994, which I don't because they didn't really
win that game against Michigan State.
It was forfeited to them after the season was over.
This is the first time Indiana's won double digit games and the
last time Indiana had won nine games happened in 1967.
So you know, to me, I think minimum reasonable expectations
for this upcoming year, it's probably the seven win mark.
I think there would still be people that would be somewhat
disappointed by seven wins. I just, I think it's important
to remember that it's hard to win a lot of football games.
And the idea is raising the floor first before you can raise
the ceiling. You could say that.
And, and again, I'm kind of taking seven wins in a vacuum
and not looking specifically at the schedule, but you think
about, you know, taking last year momentarily out of the
picture, an IU football team winning seven games in any
season up until the beginning of the 2024 year would have been a
cause for celebration. Last year's team winning seven
games would have been a cause for celebration.
The fact that Indiana overachieved to the degree that
they did, I don't think should be necessarily what changes
that. And I expect Indiana to win more
games than 7 next year, given who they've got coming back and
who they brought in and what their schedule looks like.
But I also think if they win seven games next year in the
regular season going into a bowl with a chance to win an eighth,
that would feel like a pretty good year regardless of whatever
is going on because it means well.
Hey, unlike say 2020 when they won 75% of their games and then
went out and went 2 and 10 the following year.
There wasn't the huge regression that you've gotten historically
when Indiana has had these seasons where they won a bunch
of games. So that's my answer on the on
the first part of the question, Scott, what would you say?
I mean, they got to make the College Football Playoff.
You got to fire Signeti. No, no, I I'm in exactly the
same boat. I've been telling a lot of
people the same thing that, you know, it's about raising the
floor and it's about, you know, building consistency.
And so to me, you know, IU football, you know, up through
Tom Allen, Kevin with the whole time has been like, we get to
six wins in the bowl and let's do that two or three years in a
row, and I still think that stays the same.
I, I agree with you that last year was I have so much optimism
about what happened last year and the fact that I feel like
people that the entire staff knows what they're doing that I,
I like you, I'm able to raise the optimism a little bit.
But I'm with you, like seven wins seems very like a very fair
ask of this team. And if they fall a little bit
short and get to five or six wins, OK.
I mean, I would, I would color a couple things in there that to
me, it's like, I I wouldn't go so much for records, but little
things like can you hold serve at home?
You know, again, we got to look at the look at the schedule.
Like I'm sure there'll be some years like we're playing Oregon,
Michigan, Ohio State at home. It's like maybe not the case.
I know it's not happening next year, but like, can you hold
serve at home or at least go 5 and one at home and, and have a,
you know, a very much over 500 winning record home.
I think that's key. I would also say that, you know,
it's been 34 years since we've won a bowl game.
Last year was really different. That was a bowl game.
Asking us to win a road game at Notre Dame is different than,
you know, winning, you know, whatever, you know, an insight
bowl game. But it's like, can you win a
bowl game coming up this year? Like can we get that monkey off
our back? Can we just start kind of
knocking these things off? But I, you know, I've, I've been
very, everyone I've talked to have been like, look, this year
was awesome. This year was outside the bounds
of what I expected. And we can't just go nuts on our
expectations. And yeah, the schedule looks
interesting next year. It's like we have 3 tough Rd.
games, you know, Oregon, Penn State and Iowa.
You know, any other year at you know, we did this 12 months ago.
I'm never be like, wow, can you go 2 in one of those games?
Like, no, you'd be like, all right, well, there's three
losses and then Oh my God, can we at least beat Indiana State?
You're just you, you, you have to.
You didn't move the bar that much.
Like College Football Playoff is not something we need to be
talking about in the preseason this coming year.
We need to talk about going, can you go six or seven wins?
Can you make a bowl? Can you do that two or three
years in a row? And then you've shown all right,
now we can move up. And these things are not always
linear. Like you, you look at
Northwestern's kind of when they have their growth curve, it's
like they won a bowl, won a bowl, missed one and then went
to a better bowl and then like missed one, like moving up.
So you're going to have ups and downs.
But I, I echo almost everything you're saying.
And as I look, you know, for this year and for the next year
after. I don't think I'm ready to say
eight wins is what we need to get to for a successful season
until, you know, if if they go to a bowl this coming season and
they win a bowl and then maybe then the year after they go to a
high level bowl. At that point, it's like, OK,
you've gone three years in a row.
You've had one CFP make maybe you're close to another one at
that point. After three seasons like that,
then it's like, OK, now I believe enough to say now eight
and nine wins is what should be the the ceiling.
And but honestly, that's probably the top of the ceiling
I'm ever going to get. I mean, in India, you're still
in the Big 10, like Oregon, Michigan, Ohio State, Penn
State, like they're all still there.
So if you're, you know, there's only one team that really gets
to say we're going to win everything and the national
championship this year, bust it's like that's Ohio State.
And if you're talking about 9 or 10 wins as you're ceiling,
that's really damn close to that.
So anyway, I just, I think thinking 7 seven wins is not
that far off from like what kind of top level expectations for an
Indiana program could be, unless we get, you know, 10 or 20 years
of excellence, which sign me up, I'm in for it.
But no, I, I think that's my biggest concern this year is
people just having unrealistic expectations.
And it's like you get to that first game against Illinois, who
will also should be also be ranked in that game if they lose
it. And suddenly like, Oh my God,
like we're, it's like it's, it's one game.
Like we can still get to six wins.
We can still get to seven wins. We're still building something
here and it's not always going to be pretty.
Yeah. I mean, ultimately by look at
it, the ultimately the, the so much of last year, we talked
about this a lot on the football, the XS and OS pod with
Taylor. There's there's systems in
place, there's things that you're doing, you're trying to
view. Last year was about building
culture and Indiana took advantage of a favorable
schedule as well as an influx of culture and it all worked.
Will it work again the same way this year?
I think so, because I think this coaching staff, they've they've
stayed together. They know what they're doing.
They've done a really good job in the portal.
There's still some pieces that they're missing, like an edge
rusher, as Taylor mentioned, and reinforcements on the offensive
line. They could still get those, but
right now, like I think it given where Indiana has to play and
the way the schedule lays out with a lot of cut tough games
clustered relatively early in the season, unlike last year,
it's probably going to be a little bit difficult for Indiana
to reach the same heights they did last year.
Now lot of off season to happen between now and then.
So we'll have to see how things play out.
But as you mentioned, like from the minimum expectation
perspective, I feel like we're, we're well in the range at 7:00
to 8:00 wins where you should feel good about that season.
What I look at for this upcoming year, I, I don't think like nine
and three is an unreasonable ask.
As was, as was mentioned, like you look at the schedule and you
look at the, the way that it plays out.
Indiana has some pretty tough games.
They got Illinois at home. Illinois's ranked I think 13th
in, in a couple of different polls.
They're going to be very good. They got to go to Iowa.
IIU does not play well with Iowa.
Historically. Iowa's a really tough team to
play on the road against. That's a winnable game.
Both of those are winnable games.
You got to go to Oregon. Oregon's going to be a top ten
team again. And then later on in the season
you got to go to Penn State. Penn State has a top five team.
I mean, they may be the favorite to win the Big 10 next year.
You've got a lot of winnable games.
You know, you've you've got the three non conference games are
very soft and and that's probably good going into this
year 'cause you're going to have a lot of new pieces.
You got to get acclimated. You got Michigan State at home,
you got UCLA at home. Those are both talented teams
that underperformed at Maryland, Wisconsin, at home, at Purdue.
I mean, look, ultimately Indiana has to play at a high level
consistently. And it's hard for us to really
say, yes, they're automatically going to do that until we see
them do it again. But I do think nine wins is
doable. I think even 10 is doable.
You know, a lot of it is going to hinge on what happens in
those back-to-back weeks where they play Illinois and Iowa and
if they can get through, if they get through those two games and
get to the buy and they're five and O, then I think you should
re evaluate your expectations. And if they don't, I I'm not
freaking out about it. You know, those are both very
tough games and those are games that Indiana didn't necessarily
have on their schedule last year in terms of overall caliber of
opponents. So I am really fascinated to see
how this plays out. I think the schedule still sets
up really well for IU and it's certainly a joy seeing neither
Michigan or Ohio State on the schedule.
That's a nice change of pace, but they do have two of the top
three or four teams in the conference in terms of total
talent on their schedule and they got to go to both of those.
That's going to be a tough sled in terms of getting back up into
CFP conversation. And again, I just think I, I
know what you're saying there. I just, I think, you know, it
was awesome this year. We, we, we can't be talking
about CFP conversation, you know, with this team with any,
any point going into the year. Like I think that's going to set
people up for a rough year. And I, I think it's just, it's
not where you should be. And I look at it this way, like
again, you have the three soft non conference, you know,
Illinois at home, at Iowa, at Oregon.
That's a really tough stretch. Those are all teams that are
probably going to be ranked or if not totally ranked.
Iowa's a tough place to play. It'll be up there.
I'm assuming that, you know, you, you could lose all three of
those. But The thing is, you come home,
you play Michigan State, UCLA, again, both teams that I would
say I agree with you underperformed.
And we we're probably in echelon above, you know, if you lose all
three, Illinois, Iowa, Oregon, you come home and win those two,
you're still 5:00 and 3:00 at the end of October.
How many years like Caitlin, we'll be doing like 20 years.
Like how many years like do I just want to be 5 and three with
a chance to win our 6th game? And it not being the one game
against Purdue, you'd be looking at five games to get one win to
be bull eligible. Like I will take that every
year. I, I think to me it's like
that's more the mindset we need to be thinking of to try and be
happy and exceed expectations than even to ever mention the
College Football Playoff again. Because I think getting in those
areas is going, it's just going to be tough.
And it's like something that it's, it's asking a lot of this
program to do like in back-to-back years or even 2 out
of three years. To me, it's again, can you be in
a spot where you're, are you comfortably in?
Do you have a bowl wrapped up in November and you're trying to
now get a better bowl in November?
That to me is like, that's a really good place to be for this
program. That's something we.
We also haven't been in very much at all.
Right, Yeah, I can already see the the comments like, oh, you
guys are just like, you know, soft pedaling here and you know,
you're making excuses for for IU or your or you don't have a high
enough standards. Just saying we've been doing
this long enough. This is rarely a linear thing.
And you can look around college football, it's rare that you
would go like eleven wins and now that's the floor.
That's not how it works and well.
It's it's funny because one of your questions with Taylor that
that was asked to you guys was, and I'm paraphrasing with
something along the lines of, you know, hey, we did really
well, but you know, now, you know, can can you really compete
with the Ohio States and Michigan's without getting that
four or five star, you know, recruiting talent?
You know, how do we fix that? It's like, well, good luck.
Like like you like you just don't in 18 months, but like,
hey, we're going to start out recruiting Michigan for five
stars. Like you're going to have to
find ways to continue to, to compete against those teams
because Ohio State's not going to stop recruiting.
Like they're still going to get a bunch of five stars.
And you're not the only team also trying to get those five
stars. So it's a it's not a silly.
All questions are awesome. We love them all.
By the way, Crimson cast is instituting a question seat
license. So you know if you want to
start. 30 and 5030 to get it on the air.
But you know, it's it's like those kinds of questions like,
all right, well, now we just got to start doing this.
It's like, well, it's not that easy to just suddenly start
getting a bunch of five star recruits like you.
You always mention Iowa and Wisconsin as teams that you
know, are able to do it without that.
They're trying. It's like they they are trying
to get some of that top tier talent.
They haven't been able to break feelings.
Very few teams that get that much top tier talent on a
regular basis. So I, I do questions like that
make many wonder people's, you know, thought process.
Sometimes it's like you're Indiana's going to have to
always be kind of keeping those expectations a little bit more
tampered because I don't see a reality, no matter how much
success we have over the next even the next seven years, a
world where suddenly we have out recruited 5 stars by Ohio State,
Michigan or Penn State. No, and again, as we sort of
talked about on the on that show, it's it's less about that
level of recruiting and it's more about doing a better job
with four stars, doing a better job with developing the talent
you've got. You know, one of the things that
was mentioned a lot around the the game between Notre Dame and
Ohio State was that, you know, Notre Dame didn't have a ton of
five stars. They had a bunch of four stars
and they used the four stars, you know, really effectively.
They developed them very well and there was clearly a a talent
shelf that Ohio State was on that Notre Dame had not reached,
but they were still competitive in that game.
It it's really and, and, and you know, now they lost.
Notre Dame didn't deserve to be. There not throw that out there
exactly, no. One deserved to be there, but
Ohio State, but no. But, but ultimately the, the
reality of the situation is you're, you've now catapulted
yourself into a different echelon.
You're getting looks from recruits you weren't getting
looks from before. You're in the group of things
and you'll get you'll get some of those people.
And I think that the message that Signetti and his staff have
sent regularly through their, their coaching, through their
behind the scenes stuff, through the way that they run the
program is going to pay a lot of dividends.
It's just going to take a few years to fully get it.
Because you're talking about, you got to you're, you're
talking to high school coaches across the country.
You're demonstrating what you're doing.
You're, you're getting in the minds, you know, you know, the,
the juniors and seniors, they've already kind of got a good sense
of where they're going from the high school level.
So now you're playing for that next group of people who might
not be here till 202620272028. So it does take some time and
ultimately the record and what Indiana does with this upcoming
year, it's going to be an improved roster in terms of
raising the talent floor. Is it going to be good enough to
go in and beat an Oregon or beat a Penn State?
That's the big question. You know, you've never wanted
Penn State before. You have one at Oregon, but that
was 20 some years ago and that was a completely different set
of circumstances. So that's that's how our first
Galen. Wants to bring it back to Nardo.
Right. Yeah, they're bringing back
Denardo. Let's let's do that.
Some one of the things just for for for next seat in relation to
this talking about next season. And again, sorry, I'm I'm kind
of rehashing some stuff with you and Taylor's POV, but it was
really good. You guys also talked about, you
know, like how is there? Is there a concern that, you
know, there's a lot of film that's been seen on this this
team? And I kind of look looking at it
from a positive perspective. I do look at it a different way.
I think there might be a ton of stuff we just haven't seen yet
because like we have to remember we had a quarterback playing the
most of the entire year of the Tort ACL and he knew it, but the
coaches also knew it. So you could be there drawing a
place. It's like, I'd love to run this
RPO sweep of this like, but I can't do that with a guy with a
Tort ACL. So that's going to be off the
side and we're going to run this playbook like I, I, I don't
think you, you, you can minimize how insane of a point that is
that you had Curtis Rourke with a torn ACL the entire season and
the coaches knew it. So there's just certain things.
It's like we can't do that with a guy with a torn ACL.
Run whatever kind of actions or stunts that you want to run, you
can't do it. So to me, I, I believe there's a
whole bag of tricks and a bag of plays that just weren't able to
be run this year. And and not, I mean, what Rourke
did was awesome and it's amazing that he was able to do what he
did, but I'm sure there were plays, roll outs or, or things
they wanted to do with the quarterback position they just
couldn't do because we can't put him in that position with
knowing that limitation. So like the fact that it's not
that he's had it, but that everybody knew it and they were
game planning around it and still had a unbelievably dynamic
and fun looking offense. To me, that's a real positive
going into next year. And I do think that's something
that you can be really optimistic about.
And I'm, I'm not as concerned about the like we have tape on
this. Yeah, I know.
I I think that that's all very valid.
Matt asked. I was looking at future
schedules. What's the thoughts that on IU
at UConn in 2026? Will IU buy out of that and have
a home game? I don't see the point of
traveling to a UConn. Also I wonder why IU scheduled
the Virginia series the way they did their home in 2027 when they
have 5 home big 10 games and then 2028 they go to Virginia
and are on the road. Seems like they should have done
the opposite. I mean I'll say this, I I would
be surprised if that game at UConn ended up happening.
These things tend to get switched around.
IU doesn't even have their third non con opponents set yet for
the 2020 sixth season. There's one floating out there
and look, there may be mandated changes to scheduling coming
relatively soon in terms of who has to play whom and how many
FCS teams or group of however many conference teams you're
playing. So you know, teams outside the
power conferences. You know, right now 2026,
you're, you got Colorado State at home and you're at UConn.
The the question about why IU scheduled the way that they did,
a lot of it really does come down to it looked good
contractually at the time, but it's not anything that you can't
get out of necessarily. And I, and I think ultimately
the, the scheduling, we've been critical of the scheduling of IU
football in in the past because it's tended to schedule without
really thinking about the impact on I US bowl eligibility and
overall, you know, success throughout the course of the
season. I, you know, I think back to a
lot of those schedules that Kevin Wilson was playing
against. Like why are you going to North
Texas? Why are you playing a series
against Navy? Who runs one of the most, you
know, weird offenses in the, in the country?
Why are you doing a home at home with Virginia?
You know, the people would laugh at Minnesota's schedules and
then Minnesota would win 8 or 9 games and go to a bowl game.
It's like Minnesota's won what, 8 bowl games in a row?
Like that's how you do it. You, you get literally nothing
out of scheduling these games the way that IU has historically
scheduled them. And as much as IU took criticism
for buying their way out of the Louisville game this year, they
absolutely should have done it. That that that was the right
move. So, so much of the way that IU
fans and to some degree the IU athletic department historically
looked at football was so backwards.
It was like, let's be it should have been, let's be successful.
What is every how do we make everything set up in a way for
us to be at the end of the season successful?
And that the whole history of IU football scheduling, we've
talked about this like go back to the 70s and 80s.
Look at those non conference schedules that Lee Corso was
playing. Look at the ones that Bill
Mallory's teams were playing. Like, what are you doing?
But even Ken Cameron, you know, you think about some of those
years, it's like. State and North Carolina.
Why are you playing a a home and home versus North Carolina?
Like why are you why are you bringing North Carolina State
into your stadium? There's there's just like things
that if you know where you're at and a stink with IU in
particular at this point when you're in that intermediate
range where you're still trying to move your way up.
For as much as people have talked about non conference
strength to schedule, it didn't matter this year with Indiana
and it, you know, even with the criticisms about Indiana, quote
UN quote didn't play anybody. So much of their non or so much
of their strength of schedule overall ended up being dictated
by the teams in the conference. That's what matters.
Give yourselves the easy wins, give yourselves the
developmental ability because what you need to do is get ready
for the actual season, which is the conference season, because
that ultimately dictates where you're going.
So to go back to the question there, you get literally nothing
out of a trip to UConn. Buy your way out of that.
Schedule something easy at home. Give yourself an extra win.
Put yourself in a better position to get to the College
Football Playoff or get to a higher level bowl.
That's the answer. Again, this goes back to what
we've been saying is that, you know, over the next couple of
years, our scheduling should be set up for us to get to a bowl,
not not to bolster our you know, we're not trying to get to the
College Football Playoff every season.
So you shouldn't schedule to to try and get to the College
Football Playoff. You try and schedule to get to a
bowl. The only thing I'll say with the
Virginia scheduling is I don't, I don't know when that was
thrown on the schedule. But you do have to remember, you
know, in the last 24 months, there have been two different
Big 10 schedules sent out. Like I remember they sent out
the Big 10 schedule before Oregon, sorry, before Oregon and
Washington were at like right after UCLA and USC were added at
some point that this is less than two years ago, they sent
out a three-year Big 10 schedule.
Like here's your, your, your teams and your protected rivals.
This is your schedule for the next three years.
And then 12 months, like it was like 8 months later, Washington
and Oregon were at it. It's like, well, that's
obviously not our schedule because I don't think that
they're just going to play an 8 game series.
And then suddenly it's like, here's your new Big 10 schedule.
So when that Virginia game was scheduled, Notre Dame was
scheduled. You know, Notre Dame's were
playing what 2029? Like these things get scheduled
way off. So you know, as you met like
these things are are constantly changing.
I think some of it's just placeholders and we don't know
there could be a tenth big 10 game in three years and that
Virginia thing just poofs out for everybody anyway.
The ACC may not be around Virginia could be part of the
big 10 for all we know in a couple of years.
Like these things are changing. You heard it here first, by the
way, that happens. That'd be awesome.
Like you heard it here first. I'm I'm so I, I do think like
it's when those things get scheduled sometime.
But I, I agree and I've, I have a couple of friends who kind of
still make fun of like you guys are playing nobody.
It's like, yes, we should like look at our history.
Like we haven't won a bowl in 34 years.
Like I continue to go back to like last year was awesome.
Our goal going into a season is not trying to bolster our resume
for the CFP. Our we're trying to bolster our
resume to get to the pinstripe bowl and win that.
Like that's what we're trying to do.
Couple other questions. We had a an interesting pair of
questions and we'll wrap up with this.
Aiken Hoosier asks how do you think the contrast in the
current seasons will impact the balance of administration slash
fan support both near term and long term for IU football and IU
basketball 1 program seems to perpetually provide no ROI and
the other feels primed to do that.
We also had a question which right we answer the question
from Ari, should IU worry about an attendance drop off like
later in the Mallory era if they're a perennial 8 win team
instead of a championship contender like last season?
So let me tackle the second one first and we'll work our way
back to the first one. I mean, I think you have an end
of one with the Mallory era teams where we people looked at
that and said, oh, people stop coming to games and you know,
the, the, the product was viewed as stale and and so therefore
that shows that IU isn't going to support its teams unless
they're perennially championship contenders.
That's I disagree with that evaluation of things.
I mean, I think what's important to remember, there's a if you
look at that era, you know, there was a real peak in
attendance for IU and in, you know, the rolling average for IU
in the the 88 and 89 seasons, which was picking up on the huge
attendance spike in 87 and 88. That's when it got up to its
highest number really ever. You know, it was 5152 thousand
average. It did start to fall off, but it
wasn't exactly like, oh, Indiana was perennially winning eight
games every year and and then people stopped supporting them.
You know you got to remember in 89.
IU missed the a bowl game and and you know, Anthony Thompson
lost off out of the national or the Heisman Trophy because they
lose the last game of Purdue. They finished five and six that
year. The next year they won what, six
games? You know, they had another five
win season in that mix. Yes, they had eight wins in
1993, but A, IU basketball had kind of gotten back to its apex,
and B, IU football to some degree, was still living in the
Stone Age, like you said. Like you, you and I, Scott grew
up in that era. We went to games.
You want to talk about bad stadium experiences or stadium
experiences that have literally nothing going for them.
I present to you like 1980 to 2000 with Memorial Stadium.
It was a sterile environment, nothing exciting about it.
The teams were were good, more or less, or at least
competitive, but it there was literally nothing else keeping
you in there and. Also, friends, we we talk about
the old Memorial Stadium. It's like, oh, I remember
rolling down the hill. Like that was the thing when we
went to games, like there was two hills on both sides to the
Bleacher bleachers that held like 200 people on the end
zones. And it's like we would take
cardboard boxes and slide down the hill, then you'd roll down
the hill. It's like, all right, we got to
go. It's like, God, you know,
they're playing a football game. I know.
I mean, as as weird as it sounds and look, I'm I'm not fully
excusing things, but again. You know, if you look at where
IU football was at during that era, it wasn't that different
from what Indiana did from say 1978 to 1982 where they won four
games, eight games, six games, three games, five games.
Like in that period, they were slightly better.
They made, they went to more bowls 'cause there were more
bowls in the late 80s, early 90s, but there was no compelling
stadium experience. It, you know, it was still an
era where people were were using the loophole of I can use
football to get basketball tickets, better basketball
tickets. I don't think that the, the, the
core nature of the IU fanbase is that they don't support their
teams. You know, the last time IU was
consistently good to that level happened to be kind of right at
the end of an era where IU was still treating football like
something that was there. They didn't really care that
much about it. If it was good, great, if not,
no big deal. There was very little marketing
that I can remember around going to games.
There was not a lot of media coverage.
It's much different now. And I think there's a whole
group of younger fans in particular and middle-aged fans
who have been wanting football to be good.
And there's been just enough seating the field, so to speak,
over the course of the last decade.
It's a much stronger base. It's a much better game
experience. It's a much better stadium.
And it's A and it's a much more televised product.
I mean, yeah, that's the one other thing about it.
It's like unless you went to the stadium to watch IU football, or
unless IU football was playing a Michigan or an Ohio State and
losing as they would be want to do during that era, you weren't
seeing IU football everywhere and it wasn't being covered by
by the papers very much or the television station.
So it was out of save out of mind and after the initial
excitement of going to almost going to the Rose Bowl in 87 and
winning eight games, it it sunk into the background.
I don't think that that's going to be happening here.
And I think if Indiana's winning 789 games, maybe occasionally
getting to 10 or 11 in this era, I think that the crowds are
going to be. There, I think it's going to
still be a really fun environment and I, I will, I'm
going to push on this a little bit to Ari, but I would say I'm,
I've fallen into this as well. And I fall into that same trap
of like, yeah, now you know, we had that run of Mallory, but you
look at it like, you know, Mallory's first year is O and
11:00. Second year is 4 and 7 from 86
to 96. All these questions, you know,
is, is a bunch of eight win seasons.
Is the fans going to tail off? That's 10 years.
How many eight win seasons were there under Mallory?
There were three. Like you had 10 years.
There was only three, eight win seasons.
And again, I've been guilty of this as well.
But you look at it, it's like. There were only two there.
There weren't three. There were.
There were two. There was 88 or.
Sorry. You're right.
I'm sorry.
I was wrong. I hit the wrong button.
There. There were three.
You're right. 8788 and and 93. Yeah.
Yeah.
So you had three out of 10 years and you only had two bowl wins.
So this idea of like, oh, it was just eight.
You know, they're going 8:00 and 4:00 every year going to a bowl,
winning a bowl. It's like that didn't happen.
Like you had eight and four and 87, eight and three and one and
88. And then you go five wins, six
wins, seven wins, five wins. You don't get eight wins again
until 93. So this idea that it's just this
like constant perfect eight, it is not there.
I think you also mentioned something to like, not only was
the stadium experience kind of boring, just during that time
you're playing the same teams, like obviously, but like it's
the exact same Big 10 teams every single year.
It's like, oh, here comes Iowa, that's Northwestern.
We know Wisconsin like, and teams didn't really change much.
Like Wisconsin came in and did what they did and like
Northwestern came in and they sucked and Michigan came in and
you just saw the exact same teams to to being a new era.
It's like we're going to see UCLA this year.
Like that's really cool. Like at some point USC is going
to come into our stadium. Oregon's going to come in, you
know, and then you have these rotating, you know, it's like,
oh, we probably won't see Iowa for like 6 years.
Like I haven't seen Iowa play at Memorial Stadium for 7-8 years.
Like there is a newness to college football now with these
mega conferences where you get to see different teams playing
different styles. So I think that's something to
it as well. But yeah, I mean, I would let's
sign up for five straight years of eight wins and let's see how
the fan bases do. And I, I also do think this is
also a funny, like these are great problems to have.
Like let's let's do it first. Like let's just have five years
of eight wins and then we'll deal with slight fan eight win
apathy at at the end there when when we get to it.
But, you know, I, I do think sometimes that idea of like,
Mallory was just banging out eight win seasons is, is not
totally reality. Yeah, I, I agree with you there.
The to go back to the initial question for me, a whole part of
it. Yeah.
Yeah, the the basketball part of it.
So look, all you have to do right now is go to a home game
in Assembly Hall to see the effects of what's going on in
the last couple of decades. I mean, you know, that Illinois
game, the balconies were what, about half full.
The, you know, the student section was not entirely full.
The from the fan perspective, I think the fans are voting on
their perceptions of IU basketball right now by by not
really showing up. And look, people will come back
to that because it's like Alabama.
Alabama was was not a good football program for a while
there. And then they got good again and
the enthusiasm was the highest it it ever had been. 11 good
season bring bring an Oladipo type back and like it.
It'll come back quickly, it'll stand back.
It's like a rubber band, but it's definitely down now.
It is. And, and so I look at it from
the perspective of, well, the, the, the, the fan investment
from an intellectual perspective that'll ebb and flow.
I think the big question that I have is who else hops on the
football bandwagon? You know who who among the fans
is like, I really want to support this football team.
I want to make this part of the culture.
You know, I'll say like, just from our perspective, Scott, we
look at the numbers on the podcast all the time.
This was the first year that football was in the same arena
as basketball in terms of the number of people that were
watching or listening. And even with that, the
basketball podcasts are still beating the football podcast by
about 1000 people in terms of who's turning, tuning in now.
Sustained success will help with that.
And I do think that it's going to take a couple of years for
that to build. You just don't have an intrinsic
football culture within the IU fanbase yet.
It doesn't mean there's going to be 1.
And I think that it's it's going to be on its way.
And I think you can build that around Kurt Signetti and his
staff and the success that this program is having the basketball
culture as as mistreated and is neglected as it has been in
terms of the last 15 years or so, 20 years or so.
It's still there. It's still intrinsic within the
state. It's still intrinsic within the
way that the, you know, the folks that graduated five years
ago, 10 years ago, they're still heavily into it.
I'd worry a little bit about students right now, but students
want to go and have good basketball.
They want to go watch it. It wouldn't take a lot for
Indiana to be back in the mix. I think you just have to you
have to make some changes obviously, and we've talked
about those changes on some other podcasts, but that's
that's how I view it. I think investment wise, the
athletic department, they had to make an investment in football
and they did. And that's going to be where a
lot of the money comes from that pays for whatever IU athletics
looks like as we move forward. You're already heavily invested
in basketball. They're not going to under,
they're not going to bring that investment back in terms of
resources for recruiting or coaching salaries that will be
there as well. You're never going to make
nearly as much money off of of basketball as you will off of
football. So that's where I look at it and
I say to myself, I'm I'm less worried about basketball
investment hurting football investment.
The questions always been what will it take for IU to invest in
football? What will make them think this
is worth it? I think this last year when you
put it on top of the success they had in 2019-2020, that has
pushed them over the edge. I look at Indiana, I don't see a
program that's going to under resource their football program.
I see AI, see an athletic department.
It's going to be like we have to continually invest in this and
there will be rewards as a result of it.
I have a question for you on this point.
You know that to me the open question is at as football
continues to scale. Going back to our discussion on
the the personal seat donations, you know, you bring up a point
that is true. It used to kind of be I'm just
going to get football tickets for the points for basketball.
As you start to scale the cost of both programs, you know that
that would be the open question to me as a football continues to
succeed and continues to increase, the, you know, becomes
a a cost similar to like Ohio State or Michigan in how you're
charging your fans. Can you do that and also charge
the basketball fans the same amount?
Like is there enough interest in both programs at a top tier
charging level? That would be my real question
because you're still football is still a real deal, you know,
cost wise for what you're getting.
Basketball is not basketball. You are paying top tier pricing.
Are there enough people who are willing to donate, you know,
thousands of dollars for both sports to get the points needed
to to get both tickets? That's an open question.
And it does the question I'll ask to you, Galen is like, is
there, you know, I'm, I'm trying to think in my mind, is there a
university where the fan base really supports both programs at
that top tier elite level? Because they're there's programs
that have good sports in both. Like right now Alabama is doing
well in basketball and obviously doing well in football.
But but I think, you know, let's see if Nate Oates leaves, you
know, if that doesn't kind of Peters out, are they going to
continue to support at that level?
Like Michigan's an example. It's had a success at both
levels, but you look at them, it's like if they're not making
the final four, that place Chrysler Arena is not full.
They are a basket. Sorry.
They are a football school. Same thing with Ohio State.
Like they were into it when Greg Odin was there.
They they probably come the closest in my mind, but it's
it's very unusual for a program to support both, both levels.
Like normally when you bring it down to its core, every school
is is one or the other. Or in some cases they're neither
some. Cases.
They're neither. But I got to be honest.
I, I, I resist that argument inasmuch as I don't know that
Alabama is through a huge amount of financial investment into
their basketball program. I think they just hired a really
good coach by accident. I mean, you look at the history
of Alabama basketball and they've had moments where
they've been OK, but you know, prior to Nate Oates being hired,
their their prior 2 coaches, their prior 3 coaches were Mark
Gottfried. That's what I was saying.
But my, my, my, my. But my point is.
And then Avery Johnson, it's not like they went in and like threw
a bunch of money, I don't think at Nate Oates and was all.
Right, I'm more talking about fan support, like the fan
support of. The, but even that I, I think
that is, I think it's, I think fan support is more, I don't
know what the fan support actually is for Alabama.
I don't know if it's that much. I don't know if it's really that
much at Auburn. I don't know that it's that much
at Tennessee. When you hire really good
coaches who know what they're doing, you tend to look like
you're throwing a bunch of resources at something.
I mean, IU didn't really throw a bunch of resources at IU
football until after Kurt Signetti had already won, what,
seven or eight games this year. You could look at that, say why
IU threw a bunch of money at football last year.
They didn't. I mean, they they hired Kurt
Signetti for less money than they were paying Tom Allen.
So that's that's the kind of thing I think where it's a
little bit tricky to to go back to your question, like there
aren't a ton of programs that are having high level success in
both. I do think though, that like
Kansas is a great example. And Kansas kind of had the
football season from hell this year, but they made a bunch of
investments because they wanted to keep their good coach and
Lance Leopold and he stuck around and they ended up playing
like spoiler this year. But they, you know, they're
investing in the stadium. They're doing all these things
because they had to. And I kind of look at IU as
being in the same boat. They already have the basketball
investment. I don't know what it looks like
when you try to compare those two things.
I think ultimately you are going to need to be good in both
because I think there's going to be more money and more
opportunities to make money in men's basketball.
Once the inevitable happens and the power conferences start
creating their own tournament that breaks away from the NCAA
tournament. People are complaining about it
now. Certainly it'll be a very
different type of tournament, but at the end of the day
they'll be more money kept by the schools with the power
conferences running that. Then there is right now where
it's distributed throughout the entirety of the NCAA, not just
Division One, but everything. So I think the ROI is likely to
be greater if you have a good men's basketball program.
I don't think that's why these SEC teams have have got good
programs right now. I just think they all hired
really good coaches. Yeah, yeah.
It's it's a really interesting thing though, and I think it's
something worth watching as we move forward.
Anyway, we're over time, we need to stop.
So we'll go ahead and wrap up here.
Scott, as always, a pleasure. Good talking football with you.
Looking forward to doing more of these throughout the course of
the offseason as spring ball. We'll be here relatively soon
and we'll see what roster Indiana goes into spring ball
with. My thanks to our title sponsor,
home field apparel. My thanks to all you folks who
are part of the Crimson cast family.
We'll be back with more podcasting coming up soon and
see what happens with IU basketball coming up tomorrow
for Scott, I'm Galen, this is Crimson cast.
We'll catch you folks. On the flip side, bring back the
Bison, stay. Never daunted, so on everybody.